Teatime (Rant Book)

How To Make Me Hate A Story in .03 Seconds

  I think that the (excessive yet necessary) title is pretty self-explanatory.

  And while I just realized (about a few seconds ago) that most of my rants are about things on Wattpad that make me want to unleash all hell upon the world, I'm going to continue with this anyway.

  Covers

  Let's be honest here, despite the saying, "Don't judge a book by it's cover." Everyone judges books by their cover. Especially on Wattpad. Because a book's cover is the first thing that you see when you click on said book, and it's the first insight you have to what that book is about. It also gives you some intel on how seriously the author takes his/her story and how committed they are to it.

  If you have a cover that's the Wattpad default cover (The one where it's a blurred background of one's profile picture with some watermarked words slapped on it) I don't want to read your story. Your story could be the next Harry Potter (that may be exaggerating a bit) for all I know. But, me being me, if the cover doesn't instantly immerse me in your book (because I have the attention span of a pigeon with a sugar rush) then I'm not going to read it.

  Also, if your cover is a blurry picture, solid color or crappy drawing with tacky fonts (i.e a bubble font with a light blue filling and a dark blue outline) scrawled on it; I don't even want to bother with the description. If a cover isn't appealing to the eye, what will convince me that the book is appealing to the mind? I'm not going to bother with anything else.

  "First impressions are always important, you only get one chance to make a good one. So don't screw it up by making me think you're a lazy kumquat with sucky editing skills and poor taste that thinks you're the best writer on the planet. Because I've seen things like that before and I don't find it amusing."

-Astrø, 2016

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  Descriptions

  No, this isn't a second chance on giving me a good impression of your book. If I don't like the cover, I won't even give the description a second thought.

  First of all, your story needs to have a description, I'm curious to know what it's about.

  Dear Descriptionless Novels That For Some Reason Have 900 Million+ Reads (or just descriptionless novels in general)

  Why?

-Astrø

  And no, having a single quote from a stupid pop song doesn't cut it either. Or even a cheesy quote from your story, because, what is that telling me about your book? Nothing. Do I want to read a story I know nothing about? No.

  That being said, basically telling me the entire breakdown of your plot and overwhelming me with information isn't good either. Because now I know too much and I'm bored and I want a sandwich.

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  When Books Have The Protagonist Do This:

  "Oh! Where are my manners? My name is [Insert Stupid Name That I Don't Care About Anymore Here] I'm NobodyGivesADamn years old etc."

  "Oh! Where are my manners? Out the window you cliché idiot. My name is Astrø and I currently want to bash your face in you incoherent unoriginal character."

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  When The Author Does This:

  "Ok guys! 50 votes if you want the next chapter!"

  I'm sorry but I actually don't care about your story enough to satisfy your visceral crave for votes. Because honestly, you asking me to vote for your story "or else" is going to have the opposite effect and I'm not going to vote for your story. I don't mind if you have a goal like, "I update every Thursday but let's see if we can get however many votes by then" but when you demand something in return for writing a chapter, it's annoying and it makes me not want to read your book anymore.

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I think I'll do another update today, if I'm not feeling lazy that is. Eh, it depends.

Later.

-Hollow